TA #4 -- Listening class gets a taste of level 3 'academic' passages -- Stephanie

This week the Listening Level 2 class began to transition from basic listening passages to listening passages that were decidedly more academic. Victoria predict they would be lost by the sudden change and she was right.  Apparently the biggest level shift in the CIES classes occurs between level 2 and level 3.  Foundations thru level 2 deal mainly with survival skills and developing fluency.  Level 3 and higher is where the instruction shifts to better prepare the students for academic life in a university setting.  Victoria's class is a level 2, but the last week or so, it gives the students a taste of what to expect in level 3 and this change, according to Victoria, always catches them off guard. Instead of their normal 5 minute listening, they were jumping to a 15 minute listening.

We started off as normal, going over all the pre-listening activities to get them familiar with new vocabulary and to give them a sort of overview of the upcoming article.  From my point of view, even the vocabulary was quite a jump from last week.  The 'academic' vocabulary was a lot of phrases--stuff that couldn't really be looked up in a dictionary. (Victoria allowed them to use their phones to translate since these words were so much harder.) Other words were easy, but surprising difficult to explain to a learner, such as 'postage stamp'. Both Victoria and I resorted to using drawings for that one. The students ended up spending part of 2 days going over the vocab before Victoria jumped ahead and did a review of the vocabulary so they could get some understanding of the words that they missed. 

Half of the listening passage was played and much of it was met with wide-eyed looks.  Victoria reminded them to not focus on understanding all the words, just the gist of what was going on.  She played a minute or two at a time, then stopped to ask comprehension questions.  She asked me to come with some of my own, but I didn't understand what she wanted.

The following day, we listened to almost two thirds of the entire passage, twice.  During the first listening, Victoria asked me to write down some questions to ask them, questions that required recalling details, such as numbers, or questions that would lead them from one passage part to the next passage part.  She instructed the students to take notes the first time and take more notes or check their notes the second time.  Once finished, we asked our questions, first Victoria, then me, back and forth.  I still didn't really understand what Victoria wanted from me, but it made more sense after I started doing it.  After 10 minutes of our questions, she had them complete some comprehension questions that she collected and then gave to me to grade over the holidays.  I also have the entire listening passage and I'll come up with more questions for the last third of the passage, which we will listen to in class on Monday. 

Whereas I felt really lost at first, I found my feet so to speak during the activity and ended the class by thanking Victoria for the experience.